1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the art of vehicle safety devices and, more particularly, to a safety device mounted to a side body panel of a vehicle and including a guard portion which is supported in front on a wheel set of the vehicle, in a cantilevered manner, for deflecting animate and inanimate objects from in front of the vehicle wheels.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Buses are commonly employed for various transportation purposes. For instance, buses are widely employed in metropolitan mass transit systems. Unfortunately, there are inherent dangers associated with the operation of buses. Many of the most serious of these injuries are a result of individuals being run over by the bus, such as when a person slips and falls in the road adjacent a wheel of the bus and the bus crushes a limb or other body part of the individual. Correspondingly, inanimate objects can also be crushed.
To address these concerns, it has been proposed in the art to mount a safety guard directly in front of wheels on a bus to establish a safety barrier between the wheels and objects. More specifically, as represented by U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,462,324 and 5,735,560, it is known to mount a safety barrier to undercarriage structure of a vehicle, such as a bus, with the safety barrier including a lower edge extending directly along a ground surface. The safety barrier is fixedly supported at various locations, such as to axle, frame and/or suspension structure. The safety barrier is angled such that, if an object is encountered during movement of the bus, the safety barrier forces the object out from under the vehicle to a position out of the path of the vehicle wheels.
In addition to mass transit buses, school buses are widely employed in connection with transporting students for educational purposes. Of course, still other types of buses also exist. Certainly, each of these additional types of buses can benefit from incorporating safety guards. However, many of these buses, particularly school buses, are constructed in quite a different manner than most other buses. Although school buses could receive axle and/or suspension mounted safety guards, the undercarriage frame structure of school buses is distinct such that many of the advantageous methods of mounting safety guards as disclosed in the '324 and '560 patents are simply not well suited for this application. In particular, school buses have undercarriage body portions which are raised quite high, thereby making mounting a safety guard to this structure quite difficult. For at least this reason, various types of buses, particularly school buses, are simply not provided with these known safety guard devices, even though serious injuries and even deaths can be avoided with the use of the safety guards.
Based on the above, there exists the need for a more feasible mounting arrangement for a vehicle underbody safety guard. In particular, there is seen to exist a need for a safety barrier mounting arrangement which will enable safety guards to be readily mounted to a wide range of vehicles in an effective and substantially universal manner, thereby expanding the type of vehicles which can be equipped with injury and even lifesaving safety guards.